10 ms·

If there's a "switch" here, it's Nintendo finally taking feedback from customers and third parties seriously. Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One

If there's a "switch" here, it's Nintendo finally taking feedback from customers and third parties seriously. Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4. Check. Industry-standard architecture and tooling (Unity), allowing third parties to flood in. Check. Blends their successful portable division with their console division (this has been a common refrain for awhile now). Check. They already addressed multiplayer, although they could go further with that. This is going to be a major windfall for them.

Cyph0n 10y ago
Not sure about that first one. We'll have to wait for the specs to release first.
- jbmorgado 10y ago
  Well, it's coming 1.5 years late to the game, I hope the graphic power is at least on par with the original PS4.
  - Retr0spectrum 10y ago
    In that form factor? Unlikely. My guess would be somewhere around PS3/360 performance, perhaps with better graphics.
    - striking 10y ago
      They already have 360 parity. Tri-core PPC processors (Wii U is clocked to half of 360 speed but CPU was never really the problem with those games) with AMD GPUs bound directly to the southbridge (Xbox 360 has an R500 equivalent, Wii U has a Radeon HD 4000/R700 equivalent). Also, the Xbox 360 had 512MB of VRAM and no other RAM; Wii U uses 2GB DDR3 with 32MB transparent rendering cache. The Wii U does more than the 360 with less, already. It's actually a pretty great piece of engineering. And there are already tablets that can kick butt in that form factor (https://docs.sony.com/release//specs/SVF15N17CXB_mksp.pdf https://docs.sony.com/release//specs/SVF15N17CXB_mksp.pdf) so it's not unreasonable to think that with the new AMD Polaris tech that they're going to make something awesome. Having learned from the Wii U, I think Nintendo is going to knock this next one out of the park. My biggest questions are, will there be 4K support, and what's the battery life on the tablet mode?
      - mkozlows 10y ago
        Wii U was AC-powered and comparatively large. This is a battery-powered handheld. If it matches the Wii U, that will be good.
        striking 10y ago
        If you looked at that PDF, you'd see a battery powered tablet that has an Nvidia card matching the Wii U. And it was released some time ago, before Polaris. As a user of AMD's current Polaris tech, I'm certain this next console will kick butt.
    - onewaystreet 10y ago
      The Switch uses a custom Nvidia Tegra processor which would give it at minimum the performance of the PS4, likely better: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/
      - cpmsmith 10y ago
        Would it necessarily? I can't imagine them packing that kind of power into a battery-powered tablet, especially with Nintendo's historical priorities. Edit: Pastebin has what purports to be a spec sheet[1], but this 1024 FLOPS/cycle business sounds inscrutable to me and it's not verifiable anyway. [1]: http://pastebin.com/UD1Vx9rf http://pastebin.com/UD1Vx9rf
        freehunter 10y ago
        If you think of the use cases they showed in the demo, they're not using the battery for extended amounts of time. The guy was playing while his dog did its business. That's a few minutes, maybe 15 minutes. Maybe half an hour if the dog wants to play a bit. My dogs usually tire themselves out at the dog park in about that time. The guy playing at the airport, you might be waiting up to an hour. When he got on the plane, he plugged it in. The guys at the basketball game seemed like they were killing time while they cooled down, maybe up to an hour. The person at the rooftop party, she was at a party. They're probably not playing for hours. The people in the car, I don't remember if they plugged it in or not but they could have, or they'd be playing on a short trip. The one case where the person is in tablet-mode for an extended period of time, he sat down and immediately plugged it in. I wouldn't be surprised if we find an hour or two of battery life with the most taxing games.
    - pwthornton 10y ago
      The Wii U already has noticeably better graphics than the PS3/360. This will presumably go quite a bit further than that. With Nintendo's strong art design, there are games like Mario Kart 8 that look as good as most PS4/Xbox One games.
gdulli 10y ago
> Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4. Check. Where do you get this from? The specs haven't been released and they're showcasing some previous-gen games. I doubt this will have the processing power of the original Xbox One or PS4, let alone the souped-up versions of those consoles that are coming soon.
- vegabook 10y ago
  yet to be fair, the very modest gamecube had some of the best franchises around (Metroid Prime a total classic), and even the PS2 did wonders on Shadow of the Colossus. It's almost as if, when the hardware is not supreme, creativity becomes more important?
  - takingflac 10y ago
    Or maybe it isn't graphics that make the game but rather the gameplay itself?
    - jakebasile 10y ago
      Mostly true, but improved graphical fidelity can add to the immersion and experience. But also, compute power doesn't mean solely graphical compute - more power means more advanced AI, faster menus, higher maximum players in multiplayer, and so on.
      - pimeys 10y ago
        I'm nowadays a PC-gamer myself owning a hefty computer and I love beautiful games like Witcher 3. But I still think Nintendo has some of the best games ever made on their consoles. Take a look into Super Mario Galaxy series, how they just work, are nice to navigate and play, how you can play the games over and over again and have fun even years after their release. Sure they don't have the fastest hardware, but what they can do with it is just amazing.
        10y ago
JackOverflow 10y ago
I seriously doubt its going to be as powerful as Sony or Microsofts current consoles. Eurogamer did a decent anaylsis of a Tegra processor http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-nintendo-nx-mobile-games-machine-powered-by-nvidia-tegra http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-ninten..., which should be similar to what nintendo are using in the Switch. I would assume Nintendo chose a processor that can give good battery life, rather than raw horsepower.
- touristtam 10y ago
  See one of the comments: nVidia is providing the graphical hardware. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/
  - JackOverflow 10y ago
    I'm aware. The link I provided is from a few months ago when rumors about that were going around. Also its not just the graphics hardware, the Tegra is a CPU/GPU combo.
ceronman 10y ago
I honestly don't care too much if the graphical power is not up to PS4 or XBox One. Probably doesn't because of the mobile capabilities. If there are great games it doesn't really matter if they are hyper realistic. We saw that with the Wii.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  Unfortunately developers care. I loved the Wii, but with very few serious games for it, I stopped playing it. It's too bad, FPSes on the Wii with the motion controllers were so natural even with the tiny lag.
Pxtl 10y ago
Realistically, I'm betting this one is going to lag the competition in terms of specs, and imho that's okay. Nintendo made a huge splash with the Wii while making a weaker device. This thing has to run on batteries. It has to include mobile-quality batteries and a screen, which is an added cost that other consoles don't have. With those components in mind, I fully expect it to have comparatively weak hardware so they can hit a comparable price-point.
- city41 10y ago
  Lagging in specs is a major reason 3rd parties shun Nintendo's consoles. Porting a game between XB1, PS4 and PC is relatively easy due to them all being of similar caliber. But the cutbacks required for porting to Wii U usually means they just don't bother.
  - shorodei 10y ago
    I'd say it has more to do with demographics than specs. Nintendo's demographics usually only buy first party titles, and Nintendo hasn't done much to market themselves towards the xbox/ps demographics. If they're paying devs to have Skyrim/NBA on their consoles, that's a good first step, and hopefully a sign of things to come.
    - greendragon 10y ago
      It's hard to buy third party titles when the only third party titles are games that came out years ago and that you already own on other platforms... It's also hard to buy first party titles when there are so few, and so few new IP at that (Splatoon, what else?). (I went into a Gamestop for the first time in a while a few weeks ago, was kind of surprised at how limited the Wii U selection still is at the end of its life.) What Nintendo needs is a set of "second party" devs like they had in the N64 era. But that's expensive.
    - city41 10y ago
      That feels very chicken and egg to me. Nintendo owners don't buy 3rd party games because there aren't very many. And there aren't very many because owners don't buy them. The SNES had extensive 3rd party support. Obviously it's hard to compare 25 years ago to today, but the SNES and Genesis were really "even". Supporting both systems was a no brainer for most game companies. The N64 threw a curve ball with carts, and 3rd party support tanked. Anecdotally, the GameCube seemed to have better 3rd party support, as it was a very equivalent system to the Xbox and PS2.
BoorishBears 10y ago
The Wii U dev program for Unity and HTML5 wasn't that hard to join even before they fully opened it up. The native program has been what major publishers use though, and that one is harder to get into (It was known as Warioworld)
serge2k 10y ago
> Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4 Does it? > Industry-standard architecture and tooling (Unity) I'm struggling to think of a Unity game that actually looks as good as one of the other modern engines.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Verdun (http://store.steampowered.com/app/242860 http://store.steampowered.com/app/242860) looks pretty good. Maybe not AAA good, but close. Normal mapping, particle effects, HDR/bloom, etc. Umbrella Corps is darn close to AAA as well (http://store.steampowered.com/app/390340/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/390340/). Just because most Unity games are indie doesn't mean that AAA studios can't make a good looking Unity game. It just means that most studios using Unity don't have the money to make a good looking game.
macspoofing 10y ago
>Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4. Why would you think that? It's a mobile system, running mobile CPU/GPU with a price target of a mid-market smart-phone. It's isn't going to match the PS4 or XboxOne, no way. >This is going to be a major windfall for them. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if they'll be able to run the latest AAA titles, especially with the new MS and Sony consoles coming out soon. So they'll have the same problem as they had with the Wii and WiiU - you buy the console for Nintendo games and that's it.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
>Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4. Check. Almost certainly not. It's a tablet, it's very unlikely it's going to equal the home systems with 100W power supplies and huge fans.

Cyph0n 10y ago

Not sure about that first one. We'll have to wait for the specs to release first.

jbmorgado 10y ago
Well, it's coming 1.5 years late to the game, I hope the graphic power is at least on par with the original PS4.
- Retr0spectrum 10y ago
  In that form factor? Unlikely. My guess would be somewhere around PS3/360 performance, perhaps with better graphics.
  - striking 10y ago
    They already have 360 parity. Tri-core PPC processors (Wii U is clocked to half of 360 speed but CPU was never really the problem with those games) with AMD GPUs bound directly to the southbridge (Xbox 360 has an R500 equivalent, Wii U has a Radeon HD 4000/R700 equivalent). Also, the Xbox 360 had 512MB of VRAM and no other RAM; Wii U uses 2GB DDR3 with 32MB transparent rendering cache. The Wii U does more than the 360 with less, already. It's actually a pretty great piece of engineering. And there are already tablets that can kick butt in that form factor (https://docs.sony.com/release//specs/SVF15N17CXB_mksp.pdf https://docs.sony.com/release//specs/SVF15N17CXB_mksp.pdf) so it's not unreasonable to think that with the new AMD Polaris tech that they're going to make something awesome. Having learned from the Wii U, I think Nintendo is going to knock this next one out of the park. My biggest questions are, will there be 4K support, and what's the battery life on the tablet mode?
    - mkozlows 10y ago
      Wii U was AC-powered and comparatively large. This is a battery-powered handheld. If it matches the Wii U, that will be good.
      - striking 10y ago
        If you looked at that PDF, you'd see a battery powered tablet that has an Nvidia card matching the Wii U. And it was released some time ago, before Polaris. As a user of AMD's current Polaris tech, I'm certain this next console will kick butt.
  - onewaystreet 10y ago
    The Switch uses a custom Nvidia Tegra processor which would give it at minimum the performance of the PS4, likely better: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/
    - cpmsmith 10y ago
      Would it necessarily? I can't imagine them packing that kind of power into a battery-powered tablet, especially with Nintendo's historical priorities. Edit: Pastebin has what purports to be a spec sheet[1], but this 1024 FLOPS/cycle business sounds inscrutable to me and it's not verifiable anyway. [1]: http://pastebin.com/UD1Vx9rf http://pastebin.com/UD1Vx9rf
      - freehunter 10y ago
        If you think of the use cases they showed in the demo, they're not using the battery for extended amounts of time. The guy was playing while his dog did its business. That's a few minutes, maybe 15 minutes. Maybe half an hour if the dog wants to play a bit. My dogs usually tire themselves out at the dog park in about that time. The guy playing at the airport, you might be waiting up to an hour. When he got on the plane, he plugged it in. The guys at the basketball game seemed like they were killing time while they cooled down, maybe up to an hour. The person at the rooftop party, she was at a party. They're probably not playing for hours. The people in the car, I don't remember if they plugged it in or not but they could have, or they'd be playing on a short trip. The one case where the person is in tablet-mode for an extended period of time, he sat down and immediately plugged it in. I wouldn't be surprised if we find an hour or two of battery life with the most taxing games.
  - pwthornton 10y ago
    The Wii U already has noticeably better graphics than the PS3/360. This will presumably go quite a bit further than that. With Nintendo's strong art design, there are games like Mario Kart 8 that look as good as most PS4/Xbox One games.

gdulli 10y ago

> Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4. Check. Where do you get this from? The specs haven't been released and they're showcasing some previous-gen games. I doubt this will have the processing power of the original Xbox One or PS4, let alone the souped-up versions of those consoles that are coming soon.

vegabook 10y ago
yet to be fair, the very modest gamecube had some of the best franchises around (Metroid Prime a total classic), and even the PS2 did wonders on Shadow of the Colossus. It's almost as if, when the hardware is not supreme, creativity becomes more important?
- takingflac 10y ago
  Or maybe it isn't graphics that make the game but rather the gameplay itself?
  - jakebasile 10y ago
    Mostly true, but improved graphical fidelity can add to the immersion and experience. But also, compute power doesn't mean solely graphical compute - more power means more advanced AI, faster menus, higher maximum players in multiplayer, and so on.
    - pimeys 10y ago
      I'm nowadays a PC-gamer myself owning a hefty computer and I love beautiful games like Witcher 3. But I still think Nintendo has some of the best games ever made on their consoles. Take a look into Super Mario Galaxy series, how they just work, are nice to navigate and play, how you can play the games over and over again and have fun even years after their release. Sure they don't have the fastest hardware, but what they can do with it is just amazing.
      - 10y ago

JackOverflow 10y ago

I seriously doubt its going to be as powerful as Sony or Microsofts current consoles. Eurogamer did a decent anaylsis of a Tegra processor http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-nintendo-nx-mobile-games-machine-powered-by-nvidia-tegra http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-ninten..., which should be similar to what nintendo are using in the Switch. I would assume Nintendo chose a processor that can give good battery life, rather than raw horsepower.

touristtam 10y ago
See one of the comments: nVidia is providing the graphical hardware. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/
- JackOverflow 10y ago
  I'm aware. The link I provided is from a few months ago when rumors about that were going around. Also its not just the graphics hardware, the Tegra is a CPU/GPU combo.

ceronman 10y ago

I honestly don't care too much if the graphical power is not up to PS4 or XBox One. Probably doesn't because of the mobile capabilities. If there are great games it doesn't really matter if they are hyper realistic. We saw that with the Wii.

2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
Unfortunately developers care. I loved the Wii, but with very few serious games for it, I stopped playing it. It's too bad, FPSes on the Wii with the motion controllers were so natural even with the tiny lag.

Pxtl 10y ago

Realistically, I'm betting this one is going to lag the competition in terms of specs, and imho that's okay. Nintendo made a huge splash with the Wii while making a weaker device. This thing has to run on batteries. It has to include mobile-quality batteries and a screen, which is an added cost that other consoles don't have. With those components in mind, I fully expect it to have comparatively weak hardware so they can hit a comparable price-point.

city41 10y ago
Lagging in specs is a major reason 3rd parties shun Nintendo's consoles. Porting a game between XB1, PS4 and PC is relatively easy due to them all being of similar caliber. But the cutbacks required for porting to Wii U usually means they just don't bother.
- shorodei 10y ago
  I'd say it has more to do with demographics than specs. Nintendo's demographics usually only buy first party titles, and Nintendo hasn't done much to market themselves towards the xbox/ps demographics. If they're paying devs to have Skyrim/NBA on their consoles, that's a good first step, and hopefully a sign of things to come.
  - greendragon 10y ago
    It's hard to buy third party titles when the only third party titles are games that came out years ago and that you already own on other platforms... It's also hard to buy first party titles when there are so few, and so few new IP at that (Splatoon, what else?). (I went into a Gamestop for the first time in a while a few weeks ago, was kind of surprised at how limited the Wii U selection still is at the end of its life.) What Nintendo needs is a set of "second party" devs like they had in the N64 era. But that's expensive.
  - city41 10y ago
    That feels very chicken and egg to me. Nintendo owners don't buy 3rd party games because there aren't very many. And there aren't very many because owners don't buy them. The SNES had extensive 3rd party support. Obviously it's hard to compare 25 years ago to today, but the SNES and Genesis were really "even". Supporting both systems was a no brainer for most game companies. The N64 threw a curve ball with carts, and 3rd party support tanked. Anecdotally, the GameCube seemed to have better 3rd party support, as it was a very equivalent system to the Xbox and PS2.

BoorishBears 10y ago

The Wii U dev program for Unity and HTML5 wasn't that hard to join even before they fully opened it up. The native program has been what major publishers use though, and that one is harder to get into (It was known as Warioworld)

serge2k 10y ago

> Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4 Does it? > Industry-standard architecture and tooling (Unity) I'm struggling to think of a Unity game that actually looks as good as one of the other modern engines.

freehunter 10y ago
Verdun (http://store.steampowered.com/app/242860 http://store.steampowered.com/app/242860) looks pretty good. Maybe not AAA good, but close. Normal mapping, particle effects, HDR/bloom, etc. Umbrella Corps is darn close to AAA as well (http://store.steampowered.com/app/390340/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/390340/). Just because most Unity games are indie doesn't mean that AAA studios can't make a good looking Unity game. It just means that most studios using Unity don't have the money to make a good looking game.

macspoofing 10y ago

>Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4. Why would you think that? It's a mobile system, running mobile CPU/GPU with a price target of a mid-market smart-phone. It's isn't going to match the PS4 or XboxOne, no way. >This is going to be a major windfall for them. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if they'll be able to run the latest AAA titles, especially with the new MS and Sony consoles coming out soon. So they'll have the same problem as they had with the Wii and WiiU - you buy the console for Nintendo games and that's it.

ClassyJacket 10y ago

>Console with graphical power that rivals Xbox One and PS4. Check. Almost certainly not. It's a tablet, it's very unlikely it's going to equal the home systems with 100W power supplies and huge fans.